Unified messaging technology provides mechanisms that allow voice, email, and fax messages to be managed in an integrated fashion. For example, some systems allow users to manage all their messages from one interface. Features of such systems include the ability to convert one type of message to the other. For example, a voicemail may be converted to text, a fax to email, and so on. Such systems also have ways in which a user is notified when a new message arrives, regardless of the type of message.
Email messages may be associated together as part of a chain of messages, starting with a first message and following with replies to that message. Additionally, a subject heading may list various email messages together in a search, whether the messages are actually related rather than simply sharing the same subject heading.
One disadvantage of conventional systems is that they do not associate messages received with other, related messages that have previously been received. Particularly, conventional systems do not associate related messages of different types, e.g. email, voice, fax, etc.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system for associating related messages of different types. The present invention addresses such a need.